


my sanctuary (you're holy to me)

by siriuslymylife



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 19:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13596474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siriuslymylife/pseuds/siriuslymylife
Summary: Peggy didn't believe in colours in this post-apocalyptic hell.At least she didn't until she met an angel with blue eyes and blue wings.





	my sanctuary (you're holy to me)

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: nothing belongs to me. 
> 
> This is my first fanfic, I hope you enjoy and if you have any constructive criticism, I would love to hear it.
> 
> The heading is from "Church" by Fall Out Boy

It is said that in the clash between heaven and hell, that the world was stripped of colour. That Hell rose up in a fume of black smoke and red hellfire, and that the angels came down to meet them with blinding white, and in the final battle, heaven and hell both lost colour to dull grey. 

At least, that’s the legends. Peggy didn’t think much of it, didn’t believe that the world had colour at any point and didn’t believe that the angels came down to save humanity. They didn’t care, according to some legends, they decimated places like New York whereas other legends state that they came here to save everyone. It didn’t matter at this point, everything had gone to shit anyway. 

Living in a post-apocalyptic world where she could only see in grey wasn’t exactly a wonderful life but it was the only world she had known, the war was when she was very small, she couldn’t even remember if colours was real or if people had made it up.

She sighed, and carefully stepped around some stone. Raiders in this part had got more violent and she could fight off one or two men, a whole group would either mean her death or a waste of her diminished ammunition.

 _Never go into a fight without knowing exactly what weapons you have_ , and how much you have, her brother had told her ages ago, before he had been taken from her. She needed to get out of this area, and needed to move quickly because food had become too scarce.

There were sounds of a scuffle, some men shouting, and she gathered that raiders had most likely found someone to terrorise. She knew that she should leave, that she should walk away and leave whomever to their own devices but she didn’t.

 _Oh bloody hell_ , she thought before she made her way to the sounds. As she thought, raiders were ganging up on someone. They had him nearly backed against a still standing wall, eight against one. She should go, she should really go. She crept closer and hid behind a piece of concrete.

The jeers overlapped each other as she tried to focus. , her brothers voice resounded in her head. But what was her objective here? To help this unknown man? It was a terrible idea that would surely get her killed but from her closer angle she could see the stubborn set in the man’s jaw and she knew that look, it’s the look that her brother said could move mountains if she leveled it towards them.

She saw that most of the men had a variety weapons and silently cursed. She got her gun and made sure it was loaded in time for three of the men to rush towards to the man backed against the wall. She didn’t even think about it, she raised her gun and fired at man closest to herself. The man at the same time swung at another man and disarmed him and pushed him into the other man.

The graceful way that he fought almost made her miss the raider shoot at her. Almost. She ducked behind the concrete until she heard a break in the shots and looked over to take aim again.

The man had taken down another two men, and seemed to be fighting off the rest at once, and for some reason, they hadn’t fired at him but chose to attack in hand to hand combat.

Sounds came from behind the fight, it seems the fighting had drawn the attention of others. Which was a big fucking problem, especially if it was other raiders. The situation had escalated quickly, and the unknown man had no problem taking down the rest apparently.

As the sounds got louder, the man looked towards her, she suddenly realised that his eyes weren’t grey, they were a different colour.

 _Blue_ , her mind whispered to her.

And so were his wings.

____

Listen, seeing a real angel and seeing in colour was just a little overwhelming, so forgive her if she didn’t move when the angel grabbed her and flown off ( _flown!_ ).

After flying, they settled down and she felt her adrenaline starting to wear off. The place that they landed in wasn’t helping. It was supposed to be grey, not green and brown and all these wondrous colours.

“Your wings, they’re blue, I mean they’re wings and I can see that they’re blue,” she whirled around to face him, only slightly trying to tamper down the hysteria clawing at her throat.

The Angel put his hands up and said “You think?”

Peggy was definitely going to kill him if she didn’t get answers out of him, and she told him as much.

“Let’s make camp,” he glanced around the clearing that he had landed in, “this provides decent amount of shelter and I’ll explain the best I can.”

After making the fire, (look at the fire! It contained so many colours, oranges and reds and yellows, and it was beautiful), she prompted him to start talking.

“We were like what you called a strike team, called the Avengers. We fought the battles that the normal angels couldn’t. The angels,” he sighed, “we knew that the Battle was coming soon, but we grew lazy. We missed the warning signs.”

She interrupted him, “I’m talking about the colours and why you are still here, not about why you came in the first place.”

He gave her an amused glance and politely asked if he could continue so he could make his point.

“We were unprepared for the scale at which the demons had already infiltrated earth, we expected outright battles, we didn’t realise that they had been here for a lot longer than when the soldiers had come out of hell. We got cocky in our belief in ourselves.”

He grew silent before taking a deep breath and continuing.

“Nobody won the Battle and we can’t go back. We don’t know why.” He steadfastly stared into the flames, his jaw clenched, “I got separated from my team. I’ve been searching the compounds that the demons set up to see if they had captured them or if any of them contained portals.”

The compounds. She had heard of them, that they were apparently demon run labour camps or just basically places where demons plotted, she supposed.

“And the colours?”

“I don’t know, in the last battle in New York, at the end, everything just went grey until today. Maybe I was meant to find you,” he flushed, “so you could help or um, I could help you or maybe somebody in my team could tell-”

“I’ll help you,” she was proud of how steady her voice was despite the information dump, “I’ll help you find your way to heaven or hell or whatever, if you do one thing for me.”  


He looked at her, assessing her motives. “And what’s that?”  


“When you get to wherever it where you’re from, I want you to look after someone for me. Michael Carter.”

_____

They trudged towards the first compound which was closer than she thought it was, actually, she had resigned herself to a much longer walk than this one.

“I was on my way to this compound when those men tried to jump me,” he remarked on their second morning, breaking the uneasy silence that lay between them, “they’re holding my shield there.”

“Your _shield_?” she hoped her voice wasn’t too incredulous.

He shrugged, “yeah, my shield, it’s my weapon of choice.”

She decided to file that for later use, because who uses a shield as a weapon? But she didn’t ask and decided to do the stupid thing and have faith in him.

___

The compound was crawling the guards, this one to be a headquarters of some kind, because there wasn’t any extra humans around. Steve, (an angel named Steve wasn’t even the strangest part of the last couple of days was amazing) was sure he could get in and locate his shield and information on other compounds.

She was staying behind, not something she liked, she preferred to hit things with whatever was in reach, which could be him soon enough. She tried not to graceful, ruthless way that he fought.

The commotion inside was obvious and she couldn’t take it anymore. She crept closer to the compound, and took one of the guns from the demons that Steve had killed when going inside. Subtle wasn’t exactly his specialty apparently. She didn’t have a plan, but figured he was in the place with the largest commotion.

She didn’t find him at first, but she did find the weapons room. And all the glorious weapons. She grabbed a couple of guns, and bullets, and even grenades! She hadn’t been this excited in a while. In fact, she was so excited that she didn’t notice the demons creeping up behind her, and by the time she had noticed, it was too late to pick up her gun.

But, before they could fire, it seems that something bounced off the two of them, knocking them unconscious. She turned with the object to see Steve standing there, holding what she presumes was his shield.

“You’re late.” She said, desperate to say something.

He laughed and they fought their way out.

______ 

They moved west, sometimes walking once they found a motorcycle with gas inside and rode that until it was abandoned, and occasionally, they flew. Steve didn’t like flying because it drew too much attention but god, was it a rush when they did.

They found abandoned houses and stopped in those occasionally if it seemed if it was free from raiders.

In one house, while searching the bedroom for spare clothes and necessities, when she found an old lipstick. A frivolous thing, certainly, but she’s never been able to see what it would look like in colour before. She applied it in a fit of fantasy and was quite pleased with the red tone.

“Did you happen to find any jackets because it’s going to be cold-“ He stopped and looked at her before, going red, “you look nice.”

She felt herself smile, and nodded at him, “I did find jackets, yes, they should be over here.”

He went searching for them before retreating downstairs to take first watch.

Later that night, when she was curled on one of the couches that he finally asked, “Why did you help me? That day we met?”

She didn’t move from her place on the couch, didn’t even look at him when she answered, “I thought you would have needed my help.”

“I think I’ll always need your help.”

She smiled in the dark and fell asleep dreaming about blue skies and red sunrises, and how being able to see in colour was worth it just to see him blush.

_______

Sometimes, the compounds were empty. Not empty, abandoned. They looked as if someone else had hit and ransacked them.

Steve was tentative in declaring them the work of angels or even his team, but once, humans had moved into the compound and the surrounding. Apparently they had been forced to work there when the demons were there but they were saved. They spoke of lighting flashing through the air, and of demons being taken down by arrows and Steve looked as if he didn’t have wings, he would have been able to fly anyway.

_______________

It was a chance encounter that changed everything. They were somewhere cold, holed up with strangers, because of the weather, but each side was eyeing each other warily. They didn’t trust each other to take individual shifts but they trusted them enough to occupy the same space.

Peggy thought it would be useful to gather information because they were heading in the direction that the strangers had come from. So she did what she was brilliant at, getting people to tell her things.

Halfway through the conversation, one of the girls that had taking a shining to Peggy got to the inevitable topic of the angels.

“I swear I met one,” the girl says in an excited tone, “there’s talk of a camp-”

“ _Linda!_ ” someone sitting next to her hissed.

“They’ll learn eventually.” Linda turned excitedly towards Peggy and began a tirade of words. “There’s apparently a camp where there’s angels are staying and that they’re a team of some sort and like, they’re hitting up the demon spots.”

As Peggy gently steered the conversation, getting more information on this camp and its location, she could feel the tension between her and Steve.

____

Finding the damn camp wasn’t as easy though. They headed in the general location that the girl provided and searched for it, but were definitely had no clue, and Peggy didn’t like acting on such little information but there seemed to be hope just barely brimming up inside Steve so she did it.

Once, when they made camp, after a potential location was bust, they somehow got on the topic of dancing. Peggy was shocked that Steve had never danced, not even once.

“But surely you must have danced?” She asked while she thought of the times she had spent in the camps, where sometimes they danced to music made by impromptu drums and random people singing. They were some of the best nights of her life, it made her feel alive.

“I always thought I would wait.”

“For what?”

“The right partner.”

She looked at steadily, and he gazed back with a hint of a smile, barely there. And she thought of those nights and thought that nothing could compare to this moment.

Then she thought of something, “But you’re an angel. Wouldn’t it be forbidden or something?”

“It’s not encouraged,” he shrugged, “sometimes when they came down to Earth they fell in love, took a wife, maybe had children, but they were always called back. Angels were soldiers first and we knew our duty.”

 _Were_. He said were and Peggy felt her stomach both drop and her head get lightheaded.

“But don’t you want to go home?”

He turned away, and gazed into the fire, and she wondered what he was thinking about.

“Home, yeah,” was all he said for the rest of the night and she didn’t ask him anymore questions but she could have sworn that he was blushing. 

_____ 

The next week, when searching another potential location, an abandoned cabin apparently, Steve went dead still.  


“Angel grace, barely here, but I feel it.” He made an abrupt turn and went outside. He seemed to be on autopilot until he saw a rock, where Peggy could see the tension in his back.

She came up to stand next to him, and saw the rock herself. On the rock was etched a random assortments of symbols. A bow and arrow, an hourglass, a hammer, a triangle, a fist, and a circles encasing a star.

 _Wait_.

That was Steve’s shield. He bent down in front of the rock and gently lifted one hand on the symbol for his shield. He didn’t say anything for a while, his breath evened out and he seemed to go into some kind of trance. Peggy didn’t know what to do, and landed up staring at him, wondering what to do.

Then he glanced up at her, smile on his face, “I know where they are.”  
He stood up, and Peggy felt desperation well within her at the look of hope on Steve’s face, and did something she may regret, she kissed him.

He went still under her lips, and she went to back off when his arms came around her and his lips started moving underneath hers. She felt a tingle run down her spine, like the moment she realised she could see colour, but a hundred times more glorious.

Eventually, she had to breathe, so she pulled back and looked at the slightly dazed, gleeful look on his face.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he blurted out, his face flushing.

She smiled, and pulled his head back to hers, “I don’t want to lose you either, I finally found the right partner.”

___

They made the way to the camp where his teammates, slowly but surely. They could be focussed on the mission but sometimes when he had her pushed up against a tree, well, who’s to say that a little distraction wasn’t a good thing?

They didn’t sleep together, because someone always had to be on watch, but sometimes he held her by the fire and it was if the fire didn’t compare to his body heat. They also didn’t sleep together, because they weren’t able to take that risk. However, that didn’t stop them from having fun occasionally.

“When we find them, what will you do?”

“What will _we_ do?”

She blinked, and kept back a smile. “What will we do?”

“I suppose we’ll help take down the demon compounds and figure out why we can see in colour now.”

“And going back to Heaven?” He took her hand, and rubbed his thumb in circles on it.

“I suppose Heaven can wait a bit.”  


She flung herself onto him with a laugh, joyous for this moment.

__

They found a working motorcycle, gloriously, and rode that the location of his team.

Once they got within walking distance, they climbed off and tried to be as stealthy as possible when going up. They spotted a woman, (Peggy wasn’t sure if it was an angel or a human woman), who was tiny, outside writing down something in a journal. A man (angel?), who was huge in comparison to her, in comparison to Steve even, came up behind her and kissed the top of her head.

Steve chose that time to make himself announced. 

“Thor!” he called out. 

Thor, looked towards them and grinned.

“Steve!” He boomed and came over, pulling Steve into a hug, “It is good to see you, my friend. Come inside, we have much to catch up on.

He looked at Peggy and smiled, “I am Thor, this is Jane Foster, and may I enquire your name?”

“I’m Peggy. Peggy Carter.”

“It is good to meet you, Peggy Carter, come inside and meet everyone. This is Jane Foster.”

Jane waved, but was too engrossed in her notebook to properly meet them.

Steve turned towards her, and she felt so very strong in that moment. She took his hand, whatever was coming, they could face it together.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, and any feedback would be appreciated!  
> You can find me on [siriuslymy-life](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/siriuslymy-life) on Tumblr if you want.


End file.
